Mask
by bazzer
Summary: He smiled sadly and quoted her, "Every good story needs a villain, Britt. How else are you supposed to know who the good guys are?" OneShot on an unlikely friendship


The idea seriously wouldn't leave me alone.

Disclaimer: I don't own Glee. If I did there would be more Brittana, Dave would actually have a back story and there would be rainbows and sunshine and … okay maybe not that last part.

Please let me know what you think. I need to get back to my SoN story and sleep :(

* * *

They had homeroom together, so she noticed his absence almost immediately. She wasn't all that worried when his seat remained empty as the first bell rang, jocks and Cheerios were allotted some privileges when it came to breaking certain rules, like truancy or conduct. But as the minutes ticked by her unease grew until she felt compelled to check her phone to see if she had missed a text or call. Honestly she wasn't all that surprised to see she had not, this was the seventh time in three weeks he'd skipped homeroom without letting her know beforehand, but he usually showed up to first period so she tucked her phone back into the slim pocket of her Cheerio's uniform and forced herself not to tap her fingers in impatience.

Except that he didn't show up to first period either, so she feels a little justified at the small ball of worry that's born in the pit of her stomach. Often she found herself glancing at the consistently vacant seat on the other side of Jessica Andrews, hoping against hope that he would show up five minutes before the bell with 'just woke up' hair and a heavy glare instead of a written excuse, but it doesn't happen and she wasted the entire period staring blankly at whatever thing happened to draw her attention. She knew things had not been going well for him for some time now, but he always let her know what was going on, either directly or in some roundabout way, especially when it came to his well-being. He knew how she worried, even when no one could tell.

They didn't have second period together, but she kept her head down and her hand on her phone as she ignored the odd and marginally worried looks she was getting from Santana.

By third period she expected the desk in the back left corner to be empty so it didn't shock her as much to find it so and before the bell could ring she whipped out her phone and fired off a text.

**Whr r u?**

She took the seat next to his blank one and made to grab the book from her bag but realized too late that she had forgotten to stop by her locker and exchange textbooks in her haste. Instead she took out a random notebook, opened it to a blank page and feigned taking notes around doodles of stars and odd floating eyes. Luckily Mrs. Jones had learned by then to leave the blonde cheerleader to her own devices and didn't bother calling on her for anything, much like every other teacher she's encountered at McKinley.

Third ended without a reply and she frowned the entire way to her locker, stopping only when she realized she was concentrating so much on her phone that she'd forgotten her combination. She stared at the lock, willing the numbers to surface in her mind, but nothing did. Finally her boyfriend wheeled himself up to her and spun the combination with a smile that she would have called patronizing if she knew the word. He was speaking to her, but the phone remained silent in her hand so her brain immediately filtered his voice as unimportant. She dumped her morning books and grabbed coach's water bottle before falling in step beside him as he propelled himself and they paused outside the swinging doors to the cafeteria as she sent another text.

**Srsly wrrid. Tll m whr u r.**

Artie cleared his throat and with a start she realized he was waiting on her to hold the door open for him. She followed him in and watched him make his way to a table occupied by Tina, Mike and Mercedes. Further inside Quinn was holding court at a table jam-packed with female Cheerios and their boyfriends with Santana seated at her right hand. The Latina looked up just as Brittany's eyes fell on her and they locked for a moment before her dark eyes flicked to the empty spot at her right and then over to the gleek table. Blue eyes followed the path and found Artie watching her from his spot, an open bench next to him. The phone in her lit up unexpectedly and with a press of her thumb she opened the received text.

**Dnt wrry. M'fine.**

But the response had the opposite effect by making her feel more upset, not less. She frowned so heavily that she felt the muscles of her face contract at the unusual function.

**Jst tll m whr u r.**

It took entirely to long for a response in her opinion considering she _knew_ he was holding his phone, looking at her message right then. The pause felt petulant, and from the corner of her eye she saw Santana stand and take a step in her direction. But the phone lit up once more with a location and without even looking at the two people approaching from different directions she spun on her heel and exited the door she'd just entered.

Artie frowned at the still swinging door, finally reaching the spot his girlfriend had just moved from, Santana met him there a fraction of a second later. "What was that all about?" he asked the spitfire cheerleader.

She pressed her lips together and glared at the boy, but did not respond. Instead she spun back to the table she'd just left and retook her spot under the curious gaze of the head Cheerio.

!

It didn't take her long to reach the other side of the football field and duck under the visitor bleachers, shivering as a strong wind kicked up the pleats of her skirt she wished for a moment for the forethought to grab her cheerleading jacket. It was too late though as she finally found the one she'd been looking for all morning long and having mentally prepared herself for nearly any scenario she might find him in she wasn't all that surprised at the sight before her.

He was seated on a low crossbeam, dressed normally in jean, a stripped polo and his varsity jacket with smoke curling lazily around his upper lip and the tail end of a blunt pinched between his right thumb and forefinger.

She frowned, "I thought you quit."

"I thought you were at lunch with your boyfriend," he shrugged. Brittany could usually follow even the most convoluted linearity of a conversation (her own ADHD gave her an interesting insight on how one topic could lead to a seemingly unrelated one) but the reply made no sense to her and she made sure her face reflected her confusion. The boy looked down as her took another hit and exhaling slowly, "Didn't think he'd let you out of his sight long enough to come out here and see me."

She didn't reply verbally, it was hard for her to because the words got jumbled before she could even say them making whatever comes out of her mouth usually make absolutely no sense, but she shifted her stance to let her body language speak for her. Her crossed arms were her defense at his implication that she wouldn't come and find him once she knew were to look and the set of her hips indicated indignation at the thought that someone had that kind of control over her, to stop from doing as she pleased. Luckily he'd spent enough time around her to read it like it'd been said out loud.

"Your boyfriend's a tool," he informed her hazily.

The corner of her mouth turned up in what was considered a smirk for her, "He told me he wasn't a robot and his chair isn't a Transformer."

"Stop it," he frowned at her deliberate misunderstanding , "I know you know what I meant."

Her face froze as he called her out, something not even Santana bothered with anymore.

She didn't say anything else for a long moment, just stood there, watching him with that blank stare and those fucking dead eyes that she knew he hated. He felt the blunt burn down to waste in his fingers but still he didn't move, caught up in their seemingly never-ending staring match.

Except that it had to end, and it did in the same it always did, with her hardening her face and eyes noticeably and him flinching away from the one harsh face in her repertoire. Gaze cast away from her he took the last hit before dropping the rest of it into the gravel and snubbing it out with the tip of his sneaker.

Without a word he pulled the next ready-made one from its place behind his ear and fumbled for the lighter in his jacket pocket. He struggled to ignite the Bic, however, as he couldn't get his hand to stop shaking, so Brittany finally stepped into his space and gently took the plastic piece away. With practiced ease and a steady motion the flame jumped to life beneath her thumb.

She cupped her other hand around the light, shielding it from the wind and held it up so that he could light the tip and take a drag at the same time. She stepped away when he was done and tucked the lighter into the waistband of her skirt.

Watching her now he silently held out the blunt to her. She kept her eyes on his, through the curling smoke and he knew as they regarded one another, analyzed each other, that this would be a defining moment in their friendship. He wouldn't call it a test, per say, if only because there were no tests between them, just truths dragged to light and acceptance of each other's flaws. Plus, they'd smoked together quite a few times, so, no, offering her the cannabis wasn't a test but it would let him know exactly where he stood with her. It would let him know if those freaks in Glee Club had helped her figure out what high school and Cheerios had not: that she was too good for him and his friendship.

Finally though she stepped up to him fully, took a seat next to him on the crossbar and plucked the joint from his offering fingers. She closed her eyes as she took a long pull and held the smoke in her chest until her eyelids fluttered. Slowly she let the thick white smoke coil out between her lips and he watched with undisclosed fascination.

The scene was undeniably sexy, no matter what gender got your blood boiling.

She leant heavily into him and he moved his arm to wrap it around her thin shoulders, surrounding her with his frame, and his warmth and the clean smell of his aftershave. He took the blunt back with his free hand but didn't take another hit. He wasn't too far gone by any measure but now that she was there with him he wasn't going to risk it.

Their friendship was extraordinary only in the way that it felt so ordinary. He remembers when she moved to Lima, Ohio in the seventh grade with her gorgeous mother who spoke little English, her solid looking father come home to run the family farm and two younger sisters. He remembers making fun of her on that first day for but about what he cannot recall, but he does remember that she never took the bait. She did, however, offer him a smile so brittle it made his chest hurt. And of course it would be impossible to forget the shiner and broken nose that Santana Lopez had bestowed upon him for it. The dark girl had apparently taken the graceful-looking new girl under her wing at their own first meeting and that was that.

For two years after that their interactions were limited to cautious looks, blank stares and fake smiles.

And dead eyes.

Eyes that others would take to indicate that the lights were on but no one was home, so to speak, and that he would learn to hate the way she hid behind them. Their real interaction came when their younger sisters, Hannah Peirce and Michelle Karofsky, joined the same soccer team and decided that they were going to be BFFs. Through a series of events that he never quite understood he and the blonde cheerleader became the girls' coaches and were forced into legitimate interaction.

He doesn't think he'll ever get over the surprise of how much they actually have in common, but it was a nice surprise and he usually just embraces it instead of questioning it. So here they were nearly two years later and he honestly doesn't think he would have made it this far without her, but he could never figure out what she was getting out of the whole deal.

"You're thinking really hard," she speaks softly into the air in front of them.

"Just remembering," he tells her, dropping the spent and wasted joint and covering it with gravel like the other one.

She doesn't respond right away and instead pulls the lighter from where it was digging into her waist. She flicks the switch in easy motions, letting it spark but not ignite. "What's going on with you, Dave?"

He breaths out heavily, wondering where the hell he's supposed to start but figuring that it didn't really matter if it was at the beginning, middle or end as continuity and linear timelines weren't really Brittany's thing.

Eyes forward he confessed, "I kissed Kurt."

She didn't shift away from him or tense in disgust or anything like that. The girl was the make-out queen of McKinley, boys and girls fell under her charm and she never discriminated so he knew that a boy kissing another boy wouldn't faze her, it was the way _he_ was reacting to it that bother her. He felt her move her shoulder like a shrug, "That's a bad thing?"

"It is when he didn't want me to kiss him." Brittany 'ahhed' in understanding, she had her own rules about who and how she approached people and the number one rule was never with someone who clearly didn't want it, but not everyone had the same standards as the blonde so that wouldn't really upset her. He knew she had experience with people damning her after the fact, a perverse sort of buyer's remorse he supposed, and he'd be damned if it didn't take her literally _hours _to calm him down enough to convince him not to deprive Artie of his arms as well as his legs once he'd heard what the disabled boy had said to her after she'd taken his virginity, as she always made sure there were only green lights before she ever made a move like that.

Now for the hard part, he tensed before laying the final blow, "And I may have told him that I'd kill him if he ever told anyone about it."

She stilled beneath his arms and pulled away. She stood fully and he squeezed his eyes shut not being able to deal with the look of outrage he knew would be on her face. He became aware of how she stepped fully into the vee created by his legs and prepared himself for her to walk away from him forever, for a slap, a kick or any violent reaction she may have picked up from Santana in the last four and a half years. Brittany may have been his friend first, but Kurt was her boy and the jock knew how much she cared about the singer. He knew and he was ready for anything.

Anything other than what actually happened that was.

"Oh, David," she whispered mournfully. She took his face gently between her palms and he flinched until she smoothed her thumbs over the dark circles under his eyes, "Why do you do this to yourself?"

He blinks open his eyes and looks up at her, bathed in light filtering through the bleachers and watching him with bright, clear eyes. He was reminded of when they had taken their sisters to a movie the year before and Michelle asked Brittany why the bad guy had to be bad.

He smiled sadly and quoted her, "Every good story needs a villain, Britt. How else are you supposed to know who the good guys are?"

She dragged her fingers through his short curls, "But you aren't a villain, what put yourself in that role?"

"And you aren't an idiot, so why do that to yourself?" he reached up to grasp her wrists and stop her ministrations, "It's easier, safer, right?"

"Hide behind one mask so no one sees any of the other ones," she replied, eyebrows jerking in surprise at her own admission, "The storybook villain and the village idiot."

"What a pair we make," he laughed without humor and dropped his hands from her wrists just to wrap his arms around her middle and press his face in the toned plane of her stomach. She hugged his head softly until his shoulders stopped shaking and he could pretend he was laughing the whole time.

When he pulled back finally he wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand and offered her one small, genuine smile before she stepped back. He stood as well and offered her his hand, easily she slipped her thin, smooth fingers between his thick, calloused ones and tugged at him to get him moving. Without warning he tugged back high and to the right, making her spin into his solidly built form which made her laugh for real and him to smile. "Dump the kid in the wheelchair," he requested quietly, "Be my beard and I'll be yours."

The open split of her grin reduced to a small, private smile that he thinks only one other person had ever seen and sometimes he can still feel the twinges of when she broke his nose with one punch.

She threw her arms around his neck suddenly, lifting herself clean off the ground and jumped back just as quickly. She took four steps back, out of his reach and almost simultaneously his face hardens into a small sneer and her eyes loose their shine until her face is consistently blank.

Masks firmly in place, they make their way back to the school.


End file.
